This is a continuation of this blog post. I really miss the tag based working. Why on earth do I have to save or load documents by a full path? This is stupid 80s computing. The location of a file is absolutely unneccessary for the work with it – I mean unless you work with Plan9.

So what we would want is if you safe a file you can type or select different tags. The same is true for loading a file. Just like in Epiphany and Firefox if you save a bookmark.

And the desktop background itself could also be organized differently – like a tag cloud. I would suggest that desktops can import and export tags and also that tags get defalt images accociated that can be selected by tag-themes. I mean most tags are words – so they have a meaning and you can associate an image.

Also with something like new hashtags on twitter – like something SFD09 (Software Freedom Day 2009) – your desktop can learn what images might make sense. I do this often manually with Google Image Search. But why should I do this work myself?

Those desktop should communicate with each other. It is not needed to send links via Email, Jabber or Twitter. Rather one can define groups of interest. In a way like identi.ca groups but more generalized. It should be easyto view what is new in a topic or a region – something like a view of new restaurants in your hometown. And then your desktop could already download some images into a pool. Or news from your topic of interest. Instead of using Google News you enter a space that displays interesting news from your defined topic. You could also subtract tags from a topic, so you can refine your view. The result should be displayed immediately. Also images, news, podcasts, videos, etc. should be linked together so you can have a mixed view.

What you do, how you tag can be shared with others. This should be organized by different servers. People can organize in groups and clean up tag groups. This should not be centralized but really a distributed system.

Contacts should be yet another part – so you can just through images and stuff on a contact. If this means the user gets an instant message with a link or if he gets a copy of a document is up for discussion.

Who is going to start working on such a desktop? I dont see anything on the horizon. Mostly I see part of the methods but not a holistic approach, which would be essential.

This would also mean to turn the back on the application based approach. In every application all those elements (bookmarks, adresses, …) are dupplicated.

I think it would also make sense to work on the interfaces in the sense that saving or loading and such tasks are displayed only once and always at the same place.

Another idea would be to have buttons – like a “File” button – if you press on that with the mouse or the finger (interactive displays) you get a pie menu. And then either with another finger or another mouse key you can select more.